Garrett AiResearch was a manufacturer of turboprop engines and turbochargers, and a pioneer in numerous aerospace technologies. It was previously known as Aircraft Tool and Supply Company, Garrett Supply Company, AiResearch Manufacturing Company, or simply AiResearch. In 1968, Garrett AiResearch merged with Signal Oil & Gas to form Signal Companies, which in 1985 merged with Allied Corp. into AlliedSignal. In 1999 AlliedSignal acquired Honeywell and adopted the Honeywell name.

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John Clifford "Cliff" Garrett founded a company in Los Angeles in 1936 which came to be known as Garrett AiResearch or simply AiResearch.[1] Already operating his Garrett Supply and Airsupply businesses, in 1939 Cliff Garrett established a small research laboratory to conduct "air research" on the development of pressurized flight for passenger aircraft.[2] "[AiResearch's] first 'lab' was a small store building on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles".[3]

In 1939 Garrett incorporated the "Garrett Corporation" and the three operating companies became divisions: Airsupply Division, Garrett Supply Division, and AiResearch Manufacturing Division. Needing additional space, they built their own manufacturing facility in Glendale, California, and thereby established the name AiResearch Manufacturing Company.

By 1941, AiResearch needed new space, and on April 28, 1941 moved from Glendale to what until then had been a beanfield on Sepulveda Boulevard, at the corner of Century Boulevard near Mines Field, which later became Los Angeles Airport.[4] In 1942, the Army Air Force concluded that vital cabin pressurization manufacturing facilities should be relocated inland from the coast, and AiResearch set up the AiResearch Phoenix Division in Phoenix, Arizona.[3] For this purpose, AiResearch Manufacturing Company of Arizona was established as a wholly owned subsidiary.[5]

The Company's first major product was an oil cooler for military aircraft. Garrett designed and produced oil coolers for the Douglas DB-7.[3]Boeing's B-17 bombers, credited with substantially tipping the air war in America's and Great Britain's favor over Europe and the Pacific, were outfitted with Garrett intercoolers, as was the B-25.[6] The Company developed and produced the cabin pressure system for the B-29 bomber, the first production bomber pressurized for high altitude flying. By the end of World War II, AiResearch engineers had developed air expansion cooling turbines for America's first jet aircraft, the LockheedP-80 Shooting Star. In all during World War II, Garrett AiResearch sold US$112 million in military equipment and had as many as 5,000 employees at peak.[7]

Having to scale back its workforce to just 600 employees at the end of the war stimulated Garrett to look for new income sources. "He found them in the small turbines which patient Engineer [Walter] Ramsaur had been perfecting since 1943. So that jet pilots could endure the heat generated by air friction at supersonic speeds, a way had to be found to cool their cockpits. Ramsaur's turbine provided the answer; by putting an engine's heat to work turning the turbine, it cooled the air by expanding it, shot the air into the cockpit. As rearmament got under way, Garrett began turning out a total of 700 accessory products. With the Navy order for [an on-board engine] self-starter, [by 1951] Garrett Corp. [had] a $120 million backlog, enough to keep 5,500 workers on three shifts busy for at least the next three years".[8]

By 1949, the Sepulveda Blvd. property was increasingly constrained by the demand for development of commercial space near the fast-growing Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). At that time, 2000 people worked at the facility "and Garrett was ranked one of the top three aircraft accessory manufacturers in the world".[10] In 1959 ground was broken for construction of an additional facility at 190th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance, California. Part of that facility was occupied a year later. "By 1962, 1000 employees were working at the Torrance location and by 1972, 3000 employees were based there".[11] After a gradual series of moves, the Sepulveda facility was closed in 1990.[12]

On the industrial side, the first T-15 Turbocharger was delivered to the Caterpillar Company in 1955.[15] It was followed by an order for 5,000 production units, to be installed in the Caterpillar D9 tractor. "On September 27, 1954, Cliff Garrett made the decision to separate the turbocharger group from the Gas Turbine department due to commercial diesel turbocharger opportunities. That was the beginning of the new AiResearch Industrial Division for turbocharger design and manufacturing". This new division was established in Phoenix, Arizona.[16] AiResearch Industrial Division ("AID") would later be renamed Garrett Automotive.

Following the first phase of the Caterpillar project, Garrett turbochargers saw wider use on earth-moving equipment, in tractors, stationary powerplants, railroad locomotives and ships. The Garrett T11 automotive turbocharger came into being in 1960 and promptly became popular with diesel truck operators.

In the 1970s Garrett's expanding industrial and other non-military applications had changed the basic sources of income. "At the start of the decade sales to the military accounted for 70 percent of the company's business. At the end of the ten years, largely because of turbochargers and general aviation products, the situation was reversed. Commercial sales made up 70 percent; military had dropped to 30 percent".[19] Also by the end of the decade "sales had reached $1.3 billion; backlog was $1.9 billion".[19]

Part of the original Garrett AiResearch became known as the Garrett Turbine Engine Company from 1979, and became the Garrett Engine Division of AlliedSignal in 1985. In 1994, AlliedSignal acquired the Lycoming Turbine Engine Division of Textron, merging it with Garrett Engine to become the AlliedSignal Engines Division of AlliedSignal Aerospace Company.[23]

^See "Built on Thin Air," Time Magazine, November 16, 1962, retrieved at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829434,00.html. The company was first named Aircraft Tool and Supply Company, then by early 1937 was renamed as Garrett Supply Company, and by 1939, AiResearch and shortly thereafter AiResearch Manufacturing Company, which then became a division within the Garrett Corporation. See Seymour L. Chapin, "Garrett and Pressurized Flight: A Business Built on Thin Air," Pacific Historical Review 35 (August 1966): 329-343; and William A. Schoneberger and Robert R. H. Scholl, Out of Thin Air: Garrett's First 50 Years, Phoenix: Garrett Corporation, 1985 (ISBN 0-9617029-0-7).

^This facilility remained open until 1990, when operations were consolidated at previous facilities in Torrance, California. "Relocations from Sepulveda Facility," "Spectrum," Allied Signal, December 1990.

^"During this time, the Sepulveda property was under continual siege by the L.A. Department of Airports, the L.A. Planning Commission and others, desperate for this valuable piece of real estate. Offers received never came close to the property's true value. The early '60s brought the Dept. of Airports' first condemnation suit....Finding a buyer with a fair price, Allied Signal decided in Fall 1987 to close the Sepulveda plant...." "Spectrum", cited previously.